Piedmont, California, April 25th, 2020
"Ugh, I can't take this distancing nonsense," Pacifica groaned from the Zoom app on Dipper's tablet.
"Me neither," Dipper replied, "I so wish I were back in Arkham to really get a first hand look at whatever's in the Miskatonic Library."
"No, you dork," Pacifica rolled her eyes, "I mean to see you again. Just to hold you and kiss you all over again...Just so frustrating."
"Right, that, too," Dipper laughed nervously while scratching his head, "But Mabel and I are back in Piedmont now, still at our parents' house. Didn't see much point in staying on campus since all the in-person classes were canceled. I've still got some online finals to finish, and my video editing class as well as my paranormal-electromagnetic studies class let me combine my final into one project."
"You mean that weird haunting that's in the library?" Pacifica asked.
"Yeah, the recording is still running at least," Dipper said, "They at least let me setup cameras before the lockdown was declared. What's frustrating is I haven't seen anything major. I saw what I thought might be an orb, but I rewound it and determined it was just dust."
"Well, that's annoying," Pacifica sighed, sharing his disappointment, "And I'm stuck back here in the ever increasingly droll Gravity Falls. I've only got one online final in my marketing class, but that's it. Not that I needed to worry about those other classes. Been making all As and Bs."
"How is the University of Portland?" Dipper asked, "At least before you had to leave?"
"I can't complain," Pacifica shrugged, "Gorgeous campus with a good business school. Not to mention, it's not too far from the city, so me and my new gal pals can go for sushi nights…I miss them."
"How can you afford sushi nights?" But then Dipper thought again, "Never mind. I think I answered my own question."
"As much as I don't always get along with mom and dad and their Objectivist philosophy crap," Pacifica followed, "they still spare no expense on my credit card. But I still miss my new girls. I'm sure they've got it rough, too. Have you made any new friends?"
"A few," Dipper looked this way and that, "But mostly lab partners."
"Are any of them girls?" Pacifica asked with a slightly nervous tone, but then she switched gears, "I won't be jealous if they are."
"Eh, a few," Dipper laughed, "But I promise they won't take me away from you."
"Well, good," Pacifica laughed back, "They'd better not try it. I will sue them and own them if they do." She made a fist to the camera. "But I do need to get back to writing my essay for marketing."
"I understand," Dipper lifted his hand in acknowledgment, "I need to get back to recording the video feed."
"Buuuuut…" Pacifica drew out the word to keep his attention, "If we're not too tired afterwards, I might call you on Skype and show you a cute outfit I just bought." She then winked and blew a kiss.
"Hmm, interesting," Dipper chuckled, "I bet you spared no expense on that either."
"I already showed it to Mabel," Pacifica continued, "Her response was, 'Dipper's going to like that one too much. You're spoiling my brother!' and I said, 'I can't spoil my nerdy boy toy too much.'"
"Well now I'm really interested," Dipper's eyes widened, "Any hints?"
"No spoilers," Pacifica grinned, "But seriously, I need to get back to this. Love you, my beautiful nerd." She then kissed her fingers and put them up to the camera.
"Love you, my FPS gamer princess," Dipper replied and did the same.
"Please tell me again," she continued, "This won't be forever...the quarantine, the work at the messy, greasy diner, the dealing with my awful parents…"
"It won't be forever," Dipper smiled as he said this, "I promise."
"Okay," Pacifica took a heavy sigh, "Talk to you later."
"You, too," Dipper replied before ending the call.
Dipper let out another heavy breath. He wanted to hold the Northwest woman in his arms again, to smell the champagne and lilacs in her hair, to look into her sea blue eyes again, to kiss her soft lips...But he couldn't let that distract him. He needed to review this footage and see if anything appeared.
He switched over on his tablet to the video feed on the hidden books section, containing the dreaded Necronomicon. He then turned his laptop. Two tabs were open on Google Chrome, both of which talked about different portals to other dimensions. One spoke of a permanently fused connection to a world called Mewni that opened in a small subdivision near Pasadena called Echo Creek, while the other talked about multiple portals recently opening to the Boiling Isles, of which Ford's journals chronicled extensively. He looked back at one of the old journals and saw some record of how Ford's brother Stan might have been seduced by a woman from this realm who then stole all of his Vegas earnings back in the late '90s.
He closed the browser and then looked back at the CCTV footage of other parts of the library. He noticed something...odd on camera 4. It was some sort of wispy outline that moved between the books, specifically the history section. It looked to have moved beyond some of the books and almost through one of the shelves, though it remained stationary on the other side. He could still partly see it through the cracks between the books. He attempted to zoom in on it and found it was hiding right behind the history of deadly viruses and diseases.
"Not being too subtle to the times, are you, Mr. Whatever-You-Are?" Dipper softly muttered as he squinted at the screen, trying to make out any sort of form from the pale visage. He then suffered a mild heart palpitation when he saw that, while books partially obscured it, the white mass revealed the form of a wide, grinning face. Dipper then nearly fell back in his chair at the shock of it, it's off-white eyes wild and insane peering into his soul.
He shook his head and looked at the screen again. The pale face was gone.
He felt his muscles shiver, and while that was indeed a shock, he reseated himself in the chair. His instinct kept telling him to look away, to not pursue this thing any further, but his professionalism and ambition superseded this and prompted him to search the other cameras. He switched back from CAM 3 to CAM 5 to CAM 9, from the history section to the literary fiction section to the shelf with the quantum physics books. (The latter of which for some reason was known for paranormal phenomena) He still found nothing until he finally switched to CAM 6, the medical research section. The form was back, standing now in the deserted walkway. It floated down the isle for a moment until it became stationary, around six feet away, from the camera.
He stared at the formless entity for a moment and steeled himself for anything that would come. Sure enough, the head portion of the figure formed that same ghastly, grinning face. Dipper tried to make out any features beyond this, to see if it was recognizable as someone from the Miskatonic staff who had passed on, but his efforts were in vain.
It was more of the face that ranged into the uncanny valley, something that was vaguely human but too off to call it such. Namely, the thing didn't have eyelids. They were just wide, gray orbs that looked directly at the camera. The large, toothy, almost cartoonish grin that lifted itself to either side of said eyes didn't help Dipper's uneasiness in the slightest.
No sooner had the face appeared that it was gone. Dipper then looked through the other cameras and found no trace of the spectral presence. On CAM 7, the biology section, he did find a stapled collection of papers on the ground. It appeared to be an essay by a one Anne Boonchuy regarding interdimensional frogs. Maybe the poor woman had dropped it while reading a book and forgot it on the floor. Dipper would be sure to email the dean about it in the morning.
He made a deep sigh and decided to try one last ditch effort and looked at the video feed on his tablet of the Forbidden Books.
Nothing looked out of the ordinary at first. Everything looked to be pretty much undisturbed, no books out of place, no papers or scrolls knocked loose. But as he stared at the screen, he spotted something on the Necronomicon pedestal. It appeared to be an off-white origami horse. Had that always been there? Dipper had combed his eyes over the room a couple times earlier, and he didn't remember seeing it.
But there was something worse down there as well, something equally grayish in color moving around the bottom of the pedestal. To Dipper's shock, he saw that it was the entity's face, peering at him once more like some stalking animal.
It sat crouched there for several minutes...before suddenly flying from its positing straight towards the camera until its hideous immensity filled the screen. Dipper leaped out of his seat, tripped over the desk leg and fell to the floor as all the cameras went to static, as though each were reacting in some way to it, despite not being connected, before turning to the multiple colored line test pattern. As he struggled back to his feet, the camera feeds flickered once more and returned to normal.
He looked over feeds, from the tablet to the laptop, and found nothing out of the ordinary. No weird entities roamed the literary fiction section, no spook roamed the medical isle, and even the quantum physics shelf seemed strangely quiet.
Dipper allowed his heart to slow and caught his breath again. He thought for a moment and realized this was an absolute win. He found an active entity, video evidence of it, and probably had plenty of electromagnetic fluctuation to measure where and when these events occurred for future students to examine. All this paired with his essay would be perfect for his final. He shut down the laptop and had already let the tablet display stop, leaving the dim desk lamp the only illumination in the room.
The uneasy feeling returned to him. That thing watching him on the feed was all the way over in Massachusetts. Surely it couldn't get to him here, could it? He let out a sigh and shook his head. He picked up the tablet, took it over to his bed, and laid down. He then propped the tablet up on the nearby nightstand and turned up the volume so that he would hear it if and when Pacifica called. What kind of cute outfit did she want to show off this time? The thought made him smile as he closed his eyes for a quick rest.
Of course what he didn't notice was the ghastly, grinning face staring at him from the bedroom window.
It was a good thing then that Mabel had placed unicorn hair around the house to keep anything unsavory out.
Keep safe, Dipper, and that goes for you all, too.